


Retreats and Reclaiming Memory

by hiddencait



Category: Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: F/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-06 17:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5425484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After, the three of them find something like home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retreats and Reclaiming Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



> For Alyse, who I'm sure is TOTALLY shocked by this ;)
> 
> ...but she reminded me to watch Genesys so she deserves it. I might have missed this version of Sarah and Kyle otherwise!

Kyle wasn’t sure what he’d expected of the past he’d been sent to beyond “likely death in protection of Sarah Connor,” but it certainly wasn’t this: a cabin the three of them had built by hand, nestled under tall green-leafed trees, by a lake with clear water, and a sky stained bright blue with real, actual sunlight streaming down to warm his face near every morning. Or at least every morning that it wasn’t raining down cool clean drops that never once stung his face.

 

Sometimes, it was like being drunk. Or so he thought, remembering the giddy laughter after the failed attempt to build a still, a bottle of rotgut from another Resistance cell’s encampment shoved in his hands by a chuckling John, the alcohol their only relief against the burning pain from their sacrificial eyebrows.

 

A similar giddiness filled him constantly now, the sheer headiness of it shoving away even the constant vigilance he still hadn’t been able to shake. Wasn’t sure he _should_ shake. He’d already been a part of two separate timelines – who was to say there wasn’t a third or a fourth or fuck if he knew how many others that existed with a living Skynet just waiting to send someone after his Sarah.

 

Or him, now that he thought about it. He didn’t like to dwell on the missing piece of John’s heritage. It was enough of a mind trip to know he’d travelled through time in the first place, let alone to know that he was supposed to have fathered the man that despite the way things had ended here in 2017, he still thought of as a mentor or an older brother. Kyle couldn’t, wouldn’t think about it too closely.

 

For one thing, he hated the pressure it placed on Sarah. Growing up hearing stories about the mother of the Savior of Mankind hadn’t prepared him for the tension of her shoulders under the weight of her destiny or for the dark circles under her eyes when thoughts of the future they all hoped they’d prevented kept her up at night.

 

It was better here, outside of the cities, away from the constant buzz of technology and the ever marching pace of progress towards a machine becoming a monster.

 

This place was the longest Pops had allowed them to stay in one place. Kyle hadn’t needed either the Terminator or Sarah to tell him where they’d ended up – he’d guessed it all from the look on her face, pinched at the edges as she forced herself not to cry, but with a smile creeping up when she stuttered out a quiet thanks to the robot.

 

This was home for her, in a parcel of land, and the bare foundation of the cabin left behind in the explosion, that the county had repossessed some thirty years prior when no family, when no survivors, had come forward to claim it after the deaths of the Connors.

 

It wasn’t a surprise that Pops had remembered where to find it or had the funds to purchase the property.

 

Kyle had been surprised the realize Pops _wanted_ to buy it for Sarah, had guessed long before Kyle could even think to that this place could be a something as precious as ‘home,’ even with the terrible loss that had occurred here. It was just another sign that the Terminator was something more than his predecessors, something with the ability to love tucked inside the liquid metal he was now composed of.

 

Kyle still wasn’t sure what to think about that, either, but he’d roll with it as long as it meant there was someone else helping him to protect Sarah, to shelter her as much as she would allow anyone to do so.

 

As long as between the two of them, they could offer her something like a home and a family.

 

“It didn’t win,” Sarah whispered to him in the dark the first night after they’d arrived, curled up in his arms in a nest blankets in the bed of the truck. “The T1000 – it didn’t take everything, all the memories. My parents loved it here. Every summer they always said they never wanted to leave, that they wished they could raise their children…”

 

Her voice broke, but Kyle didn’t say a word. He waited out the faint shaking of her shoulders in silence, just tightening his arms around her until she was ready to go on. “They thought this would be a great place for a kid to grow up, away from all the crazy of the city. Daddy couldn’t because of his job, but… They wanted to share it with me.”

 

Sarah let out a deep, ragged breath and wove her fingers through his, and Kyle held his own breath as he waited for her to pull away again. She didn’t, just ducked her head more firmly under his chin. The next time she spoke, her voice was so faint he had to strain to hear her even as close as she was. “It still would be a nice place to raise a kid, wouldn’t it?”

 

He’d swear later his heart stopped for a beat or three, the implications behind those words making him _want_ more than he could manage to say.

 

“Yeah,” he finally answered, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I think it would.”

 

No, Kyle never expected the world he lived in now, nor the woman he had the honor to live with in this world, in this time.

 

He’d do whatever it took to earn it.


End file.
